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Of all the people to have entered the White House this week, it is Melania who still remains the blankest of blank slates. The first lady is only the second to serve non-consecutive terms of office: the Trumps follow Grover and Frances Cleveland, who served from 1885-89 and then again from 1893-97. But during her first time in office Melania barely registered in public, preferring to keep out of the spotlight while she raised Barron, the couple’s son who was 10 at the time of the inauguration. She made almost no speeches, and started few initiatives: her Be Best platform, to raise the issues of child welfare, promote “kindness” and crack down on online bullying, fairly failed to launch.
Still now, eight years on, she remains an enigmatic presence. The scant clues that have offered access to her inner thinking have been based on wardrobe semaphores and gestures as we attempt to understand the woman behind the sphinx-like gaze. In particular, the Trump marriage has been a constant source of speculation: is it real, an arrangement or a sham? When Melania finally conceded to move into the White House in June 2017, the couple reportedly became the first since Richard and Pat Nixon to take up separate rooms.
Often, one gets the impression that Melania can’t stand her husband, or can hardly tolerate his company. She wears an expression of barely concealed impatience when watching her spouse doing his peculiar “YMCA” boogies and recoils from the simplest physical advance.
Her cool aversion was noted once again, in front of billions, during this week’s inauguration when his attempts to plant a kiss on Melania’s cheek were thwarted by a piece of millinery sporting an outsize and spouse-repelling brim. Potus was left puckered, flailing and humiliated; Melania sat stock-still. Any emotion in her face was also screened as most of it remained in the hat’s shade.
For Trump, who likes to burnish his strongman image with a veneer of inviolable masculinity and power, Melania makes an extraordinary foil. While the Potus surrounds himself with yes men and supplicants, his own wife makes no secret of the fact that she often disagrees with Donald, and that her “first priority is to be a mom”.
Rare is the person in Trump’s orbit who describes him as being less than a first concern. But could the testy nature of the Trump union help temper his more alarming Maga views? Maybe for all her husband’s hubris, Melania holds more power than we realise. Just as Trump has “employed” Barron as an unofficial adviser on youth-think, he seeks his wife’s counsel, too. In his post-inauguration speech, made to supporters on Monday, Trump credited Melania with convincing him to tone down the list of grievances he had planned to air. In particular, she had “begged” him not to raise the subject of the “J6” insurrectionists who led the Capitol Hill riots, which he managed to stay mute on, at least until he left the stage.
During her conversation with Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt last week, Melania spoke about their marriage, and how she sometimes holds a contrary point of view. The most significant point of difference, as revealed in her memoir, is that she supports abortion and a woman’s right to choose. “I’m standing on my own two feet, independent. I have my own thoughts,” said Flotus in the rare interview. “I don’t always agree [with] what my husband is saying or doing . . . I give him my advice and sometimes he listens.” For his part, Trump seems almost conciliatory and gentle when talking of his wife: when asked of her views on abortion, he told Fox News, that he had told her to “stick with your heart” and “write what you believe”.
Compared to the gusty exposition of her husband, Melania’s crisp exclamations seem almost erudite. And they indicate that behind the carapace of blankness there stirs a woman preparing to enter a new phase. Melania 2.0 has arrived in Washington in a different guise — and I don’t just mean The Hamburglar suit. She is making a documentary about the transition, she is releasing crypto, having shepherded her son and first priority through adolescence to university she has given him the wings with which “to fly”. (Good luck with that lift-off, incidentally; Barron is staggeringly tall.)
But, like her husband, she is nursing grudges against those who treated her poorly last time around. “People didn’t accept me,” she said of her first time in office, “they didn’t understand me the way maybe they do now.” This time, she continued. “I know where I will be going, I know the rooms.”
Such statements show signs of more ambition. She may only have been talking about how she prefers the decorative scheme. But if there is a microgram of hope for this new world order, one wonders if Melania will use her new resolve to try to use her influence for good. Imagine if she could actually get her Be Best platform off the ground. Last time she tried to engage the leaders of the “streaming platforms” with her concerns over online safety she “didn’t have much support”. Perhaps now those same folk are quaffing Maga Kool-Aid and Nazi-saluting their supporters (we see you, Elon), she might have a better chance.
Or perhaps she will simply elide any further public-facing duty and make house a second time in her new first home. That’s the riddle of Melania, it’s impossible to know.
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